Precious Cargo

by Clyde W. Ford

  “The Sea Maiden?”

  “Hell, I haven’t seen anyone on her for years. . . . No, Happy Hour,” he said, pointing to the Bayliner.

  He chuckled. “Best looking boat on this dock.”

  “It depends on your eye,” I said.

  He squinted. I looked closer at Happy Hour. A “For Sale” sign hung from her deck rail.

  “Which one would you take?” the man asked. “That old wooden barge, or this modern fast bullet?”

  I smiled. “We’re out in the open Pacific. Forty-knot winds. Fifteen-foot seas. Which one would you take? That shallow draft Tupperware bowl, or this solid, deep draft trawler that’s been out there and back hundreds of times before?”

  “You must be a fisherman,” the man said.

  “No, but you must be a boat broker.”

  He smiled. “Uh huh.”

  “I’m looking for Raven Diving and Salvage,” I said.

  “Need a bottom job, huh?” He pointed down the dock. “All the way at the end on the left. You should love his boat. It’s a smaller version of that.” He pointed back to the Sea Maiden and frowned.

  four

  A circular logo in the window of the old wooden boat featured a raven perched atop the arched back of an orca, both drawn with the oval shapes common to northwestern Native American art. I didn’t see a sign, but apparently I’d arrived at the corporate headquarters of Raven Diving and Salvage. The boat also had the name Raven. She appeared to be about thirty feet long. A weathered bronze plaque on the side of her cabin read, “Wm. Garden, 1942,” which to most might mean little, but for a boat aficionado equated to finding “A. Stradivari” on the inside of a violin.

  A bilge pump kicked off, startling me as I walked toward the door at the rear of Raven. It pumped . . . and pumped . . . and pumped. Caulk needed replacing. Several brass fasteners holding the side planks had popped out. A faded blue tarp, stretched over a scaffold of PVC tubing, covered most of the rear deck. A lot of people erect tarps for temporary protection from the rain. But the underside of this tarp showed several shades darker blue than the top, which gave me the impression that it functioned more as a permanent roof over a leaky vessel.

  I knocked on a rear porthole . . . and waited. No answer. I knocked again. Then someone inside knocked back. I waited. Still no answer. So I knocked once more. Again someone knocked back. I got the feeling it meant “go away.”

  I called toward the porthole. “I’m looking for Raven Diving and Salvage.”

  No answer. So I knocked and said, “Is this Raven Diving and Salvage?”

  Someone knocked back, while saying, “Not today.”

  I don’t like being told no, especially by someone knocking from behind a porthole. But at least I’d figured out the company’s communication style. I said, “I need you to go diving,” and I preceded each word with a knock.

  The man inside the boat rapped on the porthole three times, “No . . . bottom . . . jobs.”

  I rapped back, “Don’t . . . need . . . one.”

  Three knocks followed. “No props . . . No shafts . . . No zincs.”

  I replied with four, “Don’t . . . need . . . those . . . either.”

  The fellow pounded out, “No . . . salvage . . . work.”

  I hit the porthole, “Not . . . that . . . either.”

  Four more thuds asked, “What . . . do . . . you . . . want?”

  I didn’t beat the porthole this time. “I need you to dive for evidence,” I said.

  The porthole creaked as it swung back, and a Native American man with jet-black hair tied into a ponytail stuck his head out. “Evidence of what?”

  “A crime.”

  “Where?”

  I knelt, which placed me eye-level with the porthole. “Eagle Harbor.”

  “What kinda crime?”

  “Possibly a murder.”

  “Is this some kind of joke? You know, I don’t work for the police or the Coast Guard any longer.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  The man squinted at me, then rubbed his eyes. “You’re not with ’em anyway, are you?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Goddamn government agencies. After 9/11, I had to be certified to dive for them. Background checks. Fingerprints. Pay them money.” He pointed a finger to himself. “My land. My water. White people should be certified to be here. Background checks. Fingerprints. Pay us money.” He squinted at me again. “But then you’re not white, either.”

  “I’m not.”

  “You had breakfast?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You need some coffee?”

  I laughed to myself, thinking about the protein smoothie. “I do,” I said. I’d fallen off the wagon so soon.

  “Not much room inside here,” the man said. “Hop aboard. Push the gear aside and have a seat on the rear deck. Be out with a cup in a minute.”

  It appeared that Raven functioned not only as the corporate headquarters, but the CEO’s private residence as well. I set two scuba tanks on the rear deck and slid into a seat beside a rusting air compressor. I kicked away a tattered wetsuit from underneath my feet. A moment later, the cabin door handle moved down and the man bumped the door open with his hip. He held a coffee cup in each hand, extending one to me. I reached for the cup.

  “Are you Dan?” I asked.

  He jerked the cup away and narrowed his eyes.

  “I was told the owner of Raven Diving and Salvage was a guy named Dan,” I said.

  “You were told wrong,” the man said. “The owner’s name is Raven.” He handed me the cup.

  “That you?”

  He took a sip and nodded.

  “Name’s Charlie,” I said. “Charlie Noble.” I didn’t bother reaching out to shake. Raven didn’t seem like a guy for whom shaking hands held much meaning. He stood at most five feet six, but he was compact and slightly barrel-chested. He wore only boxer shorts and a sleeveless T-shirt. A fading tattoo on his arm showed a raven set inside the arc of a crescent moon formed by the distorted shape of an eagle. All drawn in northwestern Native American style like his logo.

  Raven sat atop an air tank. “Murder at Eagle Harbor,” he laughed. “Sounds like a Raymond Chandler novel.”

  “You like detective mysteries?”

  He nodded.

  “Me too,” I said.

  Raven stared into his cup of coffee, and then suddenly lifted his head. “When do we go?” he asked.

  “To Eagle Harbor?”

  He squinted as though I’d lost my mind. Raven also didn’t seem like a guy for whom details held much meaning.

  I pointed to his corporate offices. “Going in this boat?” I asked.

  “That a problem?”

  “Not if she’s seaworthy.”

  “Does she look that way?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve got a dive boat that’ll get us there,” Raven said.

  “You didn’t say anything about your rates,” I said.

  “You didn’t ask.”

  “What are they?”

  “Depends.”

  “On what?”

  “What I have to do once I get there.”

  “In other words, you don’t know.”

  “Neither do you.”

  “That’s why . . . Look, I want to dive with you.”

  Raven jerked his head around toward me. “You got diving chops?”

  “Coast Guard. Advanced Diving School.”

  “Thought you said you weren’t with ’em.”

  “I’m not.”

  “What happened? After 9/11 they wanted to certify you, too?” He chuckled.

  “Something like that,” I said.

  “You got gear?”

  “Medium-weight dive suit. Flippers. Snorkel. Weight belt. No mask or tanks.”

  He snorted. “Vacation gear.” He stared into his coffee again, then raised his head and stared at me. Raven had penetrating, dark eyes. “I’ll see what I’ve got.”

  I pul
led back the blue tarp and peeked outside. “Weather looks good. We can—”

  Raven cut me off. “Low pressure’s moving in, might bring some fog.” “Did the weather forecast say that?”

  “Hmmph.” Raven stared into his coffee.

  I got the feeling that weather reports didn’t hold much meaning for him either.

  He stood up and reached for the cabin door. “Be back in an hour with your gear.” Raven disappeared inside. Only then did I realize that I hadn’t touched a drop of coffee. I set the cup down and made my way off the boat.

  AN HOUR LATER, I arrived back at Raven Diving and Salvage wheeling a dock cart full of my diving gear. I knocked on the rear porthole but Raven didn’t answer. I thought about knocking while calling out his name, like I’d done before, but I decided to forgo the strange ritual. I’d give Raven fifteen minutes before looking for someone else to dive with me at Eagle Harbor. Thirty minutes later, a boat screamed around the breakwater with its bow pointed high. The engine revs dropped precipitously, and the bow lowered to the water.

  Raven brought the thirty-foot aluminum craft alongside his wooden boat. It looked like a miniature World War II landing craft. It also reminded me of a modified version of the boats that many Native American fishermen here use, with the exception of the weathered aluminum covering welded to its rear deck, which protected the compressor, tanks, floats, and the other diving equipment.

  I tossed Raven my gear and jumped aboard. We zoomed from the harbor bow up. Out in Bellingham Bay, a steady breeze had started from the south. In the distance, near Fidalgo Island, a low-lying cloud bank moved slowly our way. Funny, I’d looked across the bay before returning to Raven’s boat. I hadn’t seen the cloud bank then. I’d also checked the weather report before leaving the Noble Lady with my diving gear. Donna and Craig, NOAA’s computerized weather-radio voices, had said nothing about fog.

  Raven sat silently at the helm, staring straight ahead. Halfway across the bay he turned and said, “Take the wheel.”

  Which I did.

  Raven walked onto the rear deck. He rummaged through his gear and pulled out a heavy canvas bag, from which he withdrew a large, circular skin drum and a wooden drumstick with a rounded leather head.

  We made fifteen knots across the bay, about double the Noble Lady’s top speed. While we skipped along the light chop, Raven sat on the rear deck, eyes closed, beating out a rhythm in time with our boat clapping into the waves. Then we rounded Carter Point, the south tip of Lummi Island, and the drumming stopped. I looked over my shoulder. Raven slipped his drum and drumstick back in the canvas bag. He walked into the cabin.

  “You want the wheel?” I asked.

  Raven walked over to a window and looked out. “SEALs,” he said. “Underwater demolition. Desert Storm. I blew out my eardrums more times than I can remember. Sometimes I feel vibration through my body better than I hear sound. Playing the drums helps calm my nerves. Besides, I drummed to ask the spirit world for permission to enter these waters,” he added, pointing to the rippled patch of water ahead, just to one side of the dark green buoy marking Viti Rocks.

  “You mean the tide rip in the Devil’s Playground?”

  “One culture’s devils. Another culture’s gods. Tide rips. Rapids. They signify a threshold, a doorway, an entry point from one realm to another. You step over at your own peril, which is why you ask permission from the spirit world first.”

  I hadn’t thought about tide rips or rapids that way before. “Diving and salvage. Not a good business to be in with blown eardrums,” I said.

  “It’s a business I know.”

  By the time we reached the Cone Islands, a ghostlike band of mist was floating our away up Bellingham Channel. Raven turned to view it.

  “Pressure changes,” he said. “I feel them through my body.”

  I swerved south around the Cone Islands and headed into Eagle Harbor. At the harbor’s mouth, we passed a park ranger’s aluminum skiff tied to two old wooden pilings. A few red-and-white crab-trap floats bobbed in the water.

  Eagle Harbor on Cypress Island is a harbor only in the sense that it provides shelter from northern and western winds. No glitzy marina lines its shore. No docks jut into its waters. No mooring buoys await visiting boaters.

  Cypress Island is the last large, undeveloped San Juan island. The state owns most of Cypress, and it’s managed by the Department of Natural Resources. Eagle Harbor’s dark green shores and high rocky cliffs hint at the pristine beauty that must have graced Cypress and the other San Juan Islands before humans arrived on their shores.

  When I anchor in Eagle Harbor, I usually tuck in close to the five-hundred-foot cliff on the north side, which offers great protection from the wind and still affords a stunning view of Mount Baker.

  I love Eagle Harbor, as many boaters do. But word of the dead woman must have spread quickly because no other boats anchored here today.

  Raven tapped my shoulder. “What are we diving for?”

  “Don’t know.”

  He scanned the shoreline. “Tide’s falling. We’ll anchor this side of the shallow ledge in the center of the harbor. We’ll dive first. Afterward, when the tide’s low, we can comb the mud flats on the other side of the ledge on foot.”

  I swung the aluminum boat into the center of the harbor and we dropped our anchor in forty feet of water. We sat on the back deck, stripping out of our clothes and donning our wetsuits.

  “Someone died here?” Raven asked.

  “A couple pulled a young woman up from the bottom on their anchor.”

  He looked around and took a deep breath. “Place needs to be cleansed. Her spirit needs to be released from here and sent on. Bad business diving in an area where someone’s died without cleansing it first.”

  With the top of his wetsuit falling down behind him, exposing his chest, Raven walked over to the canvas bag and pulled out his drum. Then he stepped inside the cabin and emerged with what looked like a bundle of dried grass. He grabbed a lighter and set the end of the grass on fire. He blew out the flames and handed me the smoldering parcel.

  “Sage,” he said. “Wave it out over the water. Do you know her name?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t matter. In your heart, tell her soul to follow the smoke home as it leaves the earth.”

  Raven walked around the rear deck, holding the skin drum over the side of the boat and drumming toward the water. I held the burning sage over the side as well, waving it back and forth in time to Raven’s slow, mournful beat. I can’t say that I understood what we were doing or why, but I watched as smoke rose from the bundle of sage and mixed with the fog that gathered around us.

  Ten minutes later, Raven beat the drum loudly three times, spoke a few words softly under his breath, then stopped. He took the sage from my hand and tapped it on the side rail of the boat. The embers hissed as they fell into the water. Raven carefully wrapped the remains of the burned sage in aluminum foil and stowed it back inside the cabin. Then he put his drum away.

  He sat on a bench and pulled the top of his wetsuit over his head. He zipped his suit up, turned to me, and said, “Her soul’s grateful that you came. Grateful that you asked me to come. She said we are in the right place, and whatever we find here will bring peace and comfort to those who need it.”

  I still didn’t get what had taken place, but I did feel serenity settling over me in the same way that the fog now settled over the boat and the water. I could no longer see the shore at the head of the harbor.

  Raven twirled his finger for me to turn around. He lifted an air tank. I stuck my arms through the straps. I reached behind me for the mouthpiece, stuck it between my teeth, and bit lightly. I breathed a few times to make sure the tank and my air regulator worked. Then I dropped the mouthpiece and turned around to help Raven.

  His stare unnerved me.

  “Now I understand,” he said. “Noble goes where the spirit calls, even if he can’t hear his name.” Raven nodded, which led me to beli
eve that in his world I’d just passed muster.

  We walked through the gate at the back of the boat and onto the swim step, where we sat and put on our flippers. Raven tossed a weighted line into the water. When the weight hit the bottom the line tugged on a float attached to a black-and-red-checkered flag that would tell boaters we swam below the surface. We’d also use that line to make our descent. Then Raven placed a large bag of floats, lines, and lead weights on the swim step before he slid into the water. He held onto the step while he checked his wrist compass. Then he looked up at me.

  “We’ll swim a grid search pattern. A hundred feet out, move the lines over ten feet, then a hundred feet back. Wait here ’til I set out the grid.”

  “You need any—”

  Apparently not.

  I hadn’t even finished asking if he needed help before Raven had grabbed a line, a float, and a weight. He lowered his mask and disappeared below the surface with a swoosh. A white float trailed in the soft ripples of his wake. For the next twenty minutes that float rode a stream of bubbles out from our boat then back again, grazing smaller orange crab-trap floats in its path. Finally, the float dipped briefly under water before bobbing to the surface a hundred feet off of our stern.

  Raven’s flippers occasionally broke the surface as he swam just under the water back to the boat. Then, like an underwater ballet dancer, he arched back gracefully and came to an upright position, treading water. He pulled up his mask and pulled out his mouthpiece. Between spits of water he said, “It’s murky down there....We’ll travel together along the jackline, holding onto one of the search lines. . . . When we come to the end we’ll move the lines ten feet over toward the shore. . . . Watch out for crab-trap lines. Got a knife?”

  I patted the knife bound to my ankle and nodded. Then I slipped in beside Raven. I swished water around in my face mask before putting it on. Finally, I took several easy breaths through my mouthpiece and ducked beneath the surface. I pinched my nose and blew gently several times before my ears cleared. Raven hovered nearby. I gave him a thumbs-up, then followed him down.

  As I descended through the cold water, an even colder shiver wracked my body. Six years ago I’d scattered Sharon’s ashes over Tribune Bay. This marked my first time diving since then. It didn’t matter that Tribune Bay lay one hundred miles north. Diving here at Eagle Harbor, I felt like I’d just entered the world where Sharon now resided. I blinked back tears.